Chuck Yates Got A Job

00;00;00;02 - 00;00;23;29
Unknown
All right. This is a little humiliating. All three of my kids think both of y'all two are cooler than I am. And so I'm not sure I should be doing this. The, Yeah. So the Charlie bitcoin mining story. You're the one that talked Charlie about, about bitcoin mining. Yeah. Yeah. And then we've got times of dueling for paintings at galas and stuff.

00;00;24;00 - 00;00;42;23
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. I still have nightmares about. I'm not. I'm not worthy. Oh, y'all. Y'all two. Don't forget. Don't forget the, house on fire because of. And I don't know, can we can we cut that video in, have the statute of limitations? Yeah. No no no, no, there was no issue. There was no insurance claim. Nothing. We just.

00;00;42;25 - 00;00;58;20
Unknown
It was just a done deal. All right, all right, Jacob, insert the, the fire video right here. Yeah. You have a copy of it, you send it to me. Yeah. Yeah, I sent it to you all right. You want to tell that story? Right now? Yeah. Oh. You're in. Have you seen this video? I don't think so.

00;00;58;27 - 00;01;18;13
Unknown
All right, you start telling the story. I'm going to pull up the video just so Lloyd gets to see it. Even. I'm. I'm trying to think of where the where the story begins. Yeah. I mean, I basically got into, cryptocurrency and bitcoin. It was weird. I actually got. That's my old house, Lloyd. I've heard the story.

00;01;18;13 - 00;01;41;13
Unknown
I have not seen the videos there. Yeah, yeah. It's coming. Jacob's gonna put it in, you know, it's a bit of misdirection, though, actually, because, sorry, that is actually not the Bitcoin fire. That was, that was a paint fire. There was a separate bitcoin fire that wasn't so dramatic. This sounds very much lawyer lawyer. No no no no I mean so direct connect you can remind me.

00;01;41;13 - 00;02;00;28
Unknown
So he doesn't want his insurance company looking into this any more. Yeah yeah yeah yeah. No. So I first got into Bitcoin because I met Brian Armstrong at Y Combinator demo day. Oh wow. At his demo day. And actually, like all all three of us, he went to rice. Yep. And I was that was maybe my first or second.

00;02;01;00 - 00;02;20;18
Unknown
VC demo day. And, I was learning how to invest in, early stage, tech, and I was it was sort of like, ready, fire, aim. I was, I told myself I was going to go and write checks into two companies, and, Coinbase was in my short list, that class. But I did not understand Bitcoin at all.

00;02;20;20 - 00;02;40;15
Unknown
I was like, what the hell is this? I didn't even I couldn't even say it was like, magic internet money. Right. Like I didn't know what it was. And so I came back after Demo Day. I invested in two companies, not Coinbase. Everyone who invest in early stage startups, they have, an anti portfolio like companies that they might have invested in but but didn't.

00;02;40;15 - 00;03;07;24
Unknown
And Coinbase is one of those for me. And Brian and I like connected nicely on this on the demo day floor. But didn't invest. I did buy bitcoin later. And then people in my office at my software company, they got me into mining. So I built at one point something like 40, six car, six GPU rig, mining rigs, mining, not Bitcoin, but Ethereum.

00;03;07;27 - 00;03;26;29
Unknown
That was yeah, that was the thing that I was mining and, we had moved out of our house, actually very like two doors down from where, you used to live. And, and the former Missus Yates still lives. That's right. Yes. That's right. And, my old house, I convince my wife she's always up for my shenanigans.

00;03;27;01 - 00;03;45;08
Unknown
But, run these miners out of the house because it was hard to find all the power you needed to run all these rigs. So my old house, in West, you. I had set up these 40 mining rigs in it. Well, about a week after I set them up, it started to fire, on the on the power line.

00;03;45;13 - 00;04;10;27
Unknown
And, thankfully, that particular fire wasn't that bad. But, yeah, I got the rigs out of there really quickly. An interesting thing that I learned is the power company likes nothing less than, not being able to have you pay for power. They fix the line within 12 hours. Oh, no. They were back out. No questions asked.

00;04;11;00 - 00;04;33;16
Unknown
They they said, oh, we think it was like some wind blowing on the power line or something like that. And it's fixed. Like, I was really nervous that there was going to be some greater consequences, but not what year is this circa? 1213. Sounds about right. Yeah. Did you know he was doing this back when we were, like, hanging out at no Stoke and all our kids are running around?

00;04;33;16 - 00;04;51;18
Unknown
No idea. We were just talking to my kids. We didn't. We didn't have a business association at all back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we were, we were on the board together. You were? Yeah. You were kind of my, like, leader, leader, mentor. Yeah. I looked up to you as like. Oh, man. Yeah, my guy knows what was in the classroom.

00;04;51;18 - 00;05;07;13
Unknown
We worked in the boardroom and then took this on a couple of years ago. Yeah. So what? What is this? It was. It was, it was a little bit of a cryptic DM I got. Hey, man, I'm doing some cool stuff with I with dad's company. I want to talk about it. I was like, oh, I'm in.

00;05;07;13 - 00;05;31;07
Unknown
That sounds great. Yeah, but I don't know what this is. You know, about three years ago, we were having breakfast and, you know, we're cash said, thinking about going back to piping, and I want to be super thoughtful about it. I want it to be intentional. And, I have some ideas, but, I want to bring you in, and would you take a look at the company and tell me what you think?

00;05;31;09 - 00;05;58;13
Unknown
I said? Sure. So I, I went in a couple days a week and, started poking around and, you know, what I found was really an amazing organization that, was a 50 year startup. And I told the cash, I think between my operations background and, and your view, and insights around technology, we could really transform this business into something that has amazing potential.

00;05;58;16 - 00;06;15;23
Unknown
But but we would also focus on the culture side of it, not just the application of technology and good operating principles, but, you know, just change the whole feel of the company. And, that's that's what we agreed to do two and a half years ago. So what's piping? Yeah. I was going to fill in the blanks on that.

00;06;15;23 - 00;06;36;03
Unknown
So, piping technology and products, that's the that's the name of the company. Company? Was started by my dad, Doctor Durga Agarwal in 1975. The company's actually as old as I am. My dad got his PhD that year, and he started this company, and he and my mom had me and, there's a guy.

00;06;36;03 - 00;07;02;18
Unknown
Busy year. Right? In 1975. And, the company, we make the my friend says the riches are in the niches. Okay. And so what we do is we supply, these specialty products that are, built to order, engineered to order and built to order for critical piping systems. And, really the core, application is and has been in oil and gas historically.

00;07;02;20 - 00;07;28;00
Unknown
So you have piping systems. And, if for some reason the piping fails, then you have economic harm where a plant is losing well, or a pipeline is losing millions of dollars a day, and you might have, harm to human life as well, where you know, somebody gets hurt or worse. And, part of the economic loss could also be, that other equipment in the plant gets damaged, right?

00;07;28;01 - 00;07;48;22
Unknown
Because the piping is like the network cable. Right. If I cut off your network cable, you know, in the studio, nothing's going to work. The audio is not going to flow. Same thing happens inside of, inside of a plant. So we don't make the pipe. We make accessories for the pipe that are called, generally fall into two families called pipe hangers and expansion joints.

00;07;48;25 - 00;08;13;04
Unknown
And so these products allow for the pipe to expand and contract, and do the things that happen to pipes at the edges vibrate. They allow them to do that without having them fail or damage other equipment inside of the plants. And so what's kind of the the special sauce to that? I mean, it sounds like it's mission critical type stuff's got to work.

00;08;13;07 - 00;08;41;07
Unknown
Is it a patented alloy process? What's. Yeah. It's really one of those businesses where you just have to execute every single day. And, and I would say, you know, the culture of the company is one that's oriented towards that. It's part of, you know, the company that my dad built that, you know, we've been lucky to, to build on top of, a lot of things happen that, you know, sort of, build our relationship with the customer.

00;08;41;07 - 00;09;04;14
Unknown
So they keep coming back and they it's mostly around solving their hardest problems. And that could be on one day a scheduling problem because they're behind on, construction schedule or, or they have a shutdown or turnaround or they need, a product on a really quick turn basis. Or it could be an engineering problem. They have something weird happening in the piping system.

00;09;04;14 - 00;09;29;10
Unknown
And, and they're trying to solve that problem. So whatever the type of problem it is, we really show our worth and, and differentiate when we solve those hardest problems for our customer. And we're, we're pretty scaled up. So we've got, like, you know, 40 acres, a 40 acre campus located at 610 and 288 and, and we've got about, 12 acres of covered shop space, and we're growing.

00;09;29;10 - 00;09;56;12
Unknown
So we've got a lot of scale. So, you know, we can throw resources, people, machines, space at these problems. Oh, interesting. So. Dad decides to retire. Is, No, dad's at the company every day. Really? Yeah. My dad is, my dad is, is a force of nature, and, we we have to hustle to, to keep up with my dad.

00;09;56;19 - 00;10;34;21
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. And, was there a discussion over Thanksgiving dinner about. Why don't you come join the family business? How does that start? It starts young. Okay. I, I, you know, there was, aspect of growing up where this was this was the destination. Okay. And, and I kind of signed up for it, I think, you know, I've reflected on it personally on, you know, and I've done other things, like I founded a software company that, I was running personally until about six months ago, and I stepped down and promoted someone else to CEO.

00;10;34;23 - 00;10;54;27
Unknown
But, but this was business and specifically piping technology, has always been there. I started working there when I was like, 12, set up. Yeah, I had I was lucky to have parents who indulged my interest in computers, and there was always a new computer at the house, and I set up some of the company's early computer systems.

00;10;54;27 - 00;11;24;21
Unknown
We've always been early adopters of technology, a father and a son. How are you navigating this? It's a family business. Actually, it's a it's a great recipe. So, besides Doctor Agarwal, he he had, a copilot, guy named Randy Bailey. And, you know, there's been many books written around that, that successful, relationship between a visionary and and an integrator.

00;11;24;23 - 00;11;50;23
Unknown
And that's how the company got started. And looking at that, and, and thinking about a generational transfer of leadership, we wanted to replicate that successful model. And, Rakesh and I talked about the fact that we fit really well into those roles. I've been in operation Sky for, for 40 years. And, you know, watching some of your podcasts, you you famously say, hey, listen, I'm the finance guy, right?

00;11;50;25 - 00;12;10;17
Unknown
So, I'm the operations guy, and he's the visionary carrying on, a lot of the the thought leadership around where the business is headed and what's made it successful and and where we need to be in five years from now and, and how we're going to maintain a competitive advantage. And he makes the plans and and I execute and,

00;12;10;19 - 00;12;43;25
Unknown
Yeah. Doctor Agarwal and Randy come in six days a week. Still. But they've been very gracious around sharing the space at the top of the company. And, all of us focusing on, you know, what we think we can contribute best and, and, and where our strengths are, It's cool. So let's go to eye on this in technology because, obviously, if you're bitcoin mining in 2013 and teaching my oldest daughter how to do that, you're obviously forefront technology stuff.

00;12;43;27 - 00;13;02;27
Unknown
Walk me through what you were thinking there. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot happening at the company right now around, automation in general. Some of it's robotics, we which we can talk more about. But, specifically when it comes to, like, software, I, the company is half the work we do is engineering, and the other half is manufacturing.

00;13;03;04 - 00;13;23;17
Unknown
And, so that's 750 people, 250 or knowledge workers that sit at a desk, like me. By the way, side note, my son, worked for two weeks in the business over the summer, and he spent a week out on the shop floor, and I asked him to reflect every day on what his experience was like and his first day when he came back from the shop.

00;13;23;17 - 00;13;50;16
Unknown
And he spent, spent the day on the floor with, our assistant plant manager. He said, like, without missing a beat, he said, I was like, hey, what did you learn? And he said, well, you don't do any real work. You. I was like, oh, damn, it backfired. Yeah. That backfired. So, half to half the work is engineering, half is manufacturing.

00;13;50;16 - 00;14;11;12
Unknown
And, you know, when we talk about our knowledge workers, you know, also just to, like, talk for a moment about my background as a technologist, I've lived through a lot of tech, a bunch of technology, inflection points. I, you know, as a kid during the PC revolution, but got got to experience that to some extent.

00;14;11;12 - 00;14;34;26
Unknown
I was into bulletin boards and, and dial up modems and, you know, trading, illegally pirated software, because that was like the cool thing to do, right? Yeah. I was the coolest guy, right? Because I actually had a printer in my room. Yeah, my Mac with a hard drive, which probably has less compute than, you know, five generations ago, cell phone, but,

00;14;35;03 - 00;14;53;29
Unknown
Oh. And this is just a horrible story, but I'll go ahead and tell it anyway. So, the former Missus Yates comes, this is my freshman year. She's a junior, you know, comes to my room, knocks on the door. Hey, I don't want to go to the computer center. Can I please print out my paper? I have to turn it in.

00;14;54;01 - 00;15;15;28
Unknown
And I said, sure. Come on in. And then I, I said, you're going to have to read this first, though. And, it was a penthouse forum letter. And yeah. Wonder why you're divorced today, I guess is maybe the moral of the story. But to her credit, she actually said, fine, I don't want to have to walk there.

00;15;15;28 - 00;15;36;24
Unknown
And she read it in the most unsexy voice I've ever heard a penthouse letter read in. But anyway, yes, you know, actually, when I was at rice, they wired up all of the, all of campus with Ethernet. That was the first time they had. So what year were you? I, matriculated in 93. Okay, so I was 91.

00;15;36;24 - 00;15;55;28
Unknown
And when were you? 85? So I was using punch cards. Yeah, I think the Mudd building had just opened, and, yeah, we would slog our way over there. They had, mostly Macs. Yeah, yeah. And six, eights that we got excited about when they got bumped up to next microprocessor. And I think it was a dot printer and I'm not matrix.

00;15;56;00 - 00;16;16;04
Unknown
Yeah. Dot matrix I don't I don't even think it was a laser printer because I remember, you know, going over those things are loud. Yeah. Yeah. Across the page. Yeah. Well, so, you know, I lived through the PC revolution. I, I saw the internet take off that that's really when I started college in the early 90s.

00;16;16;06 - 00;16;37;01
Unknown
You know, they had wired up the rice campus. Actually, my first business was selling Ethernet cards to students because computers didn't come with an Ethernet port. And so everyone had to stick a card inside of their, their computer or buy like a dongle or a PCMCIa card for their laptop or something like that. So I was like, you know, business tech geek, but I saw the internet explode.

00;16;37;03 - 00;17;02;17
Unknown
Mobile explode, and, in this I moment, I've been at the business as our CEO, trying to understand, hey, how do we unlock the potential of this and not the potential for me to use it? Because I'm one person at the company and, my use of the technology is only going to go so far. But, you know, the word they're using right now a lot is diffusion.

00;17;02;19 - 00;17;24;06
Unknown
They say, hey, if the models don't get any better, it's still going to take 20, 30 years for this technology to change culture, society, and the economy. And and that's true. Like the the models are incredibly powerful. But, you know, the where all the as a, as a society and a culture where sipping it through a really small straw right now.

00;17;24;06 - 00;17;43;07
Unknown
So how do we get this thing to spread? I was asking that same question for my company. How do I how do I get some, bottoms up type of behavior where people are using it and they're rewiring how they work to, to get work done? And so we bought people ChatGPT accounts. That was like two years ago.

00;17;43;09 - 00;18;01;24
Unknown
And we, we would meet every month. I had it was called the the AI explorers group and buy people lunch and we'd basically trade notes on like, hey, how are you using it? And some good things came out of that. Some, like people were using it as a data analyst and saving themselves a lot of time where they were doing manual data analysis work.

00;18;01;24 - 00;18;27;00
Unknown
Right. And this was two years ago. So the models were not where they are today. They're right way, way further along today. Recently, though, in the last just in the last 90 days, we, we now have about 100 people building agents at the company themselves. Oh, cool. Yeah. And, so I discovered and became really excited about this product, called task lit.

00;18;27;00 - 00;18;45;25
Unknown
And, disclosure, I'm now an investor in the company. After I got excited about the company, I chased down the founder. I wrote him a love note, basically about his product, like, and how great it was and how we were adopting it at the company, and how I had really shifted a lot of my administrative work to this, to this platform.

00;18;45;28 - 00;19;08;04
Unknown
But the thing that is happening now, I think is like, people are are starting at the company, to rewire around how they get work done that, you know, not everyone has delegated work before, and, there's, yeah, even before I, there's a way that you, you, give instructions, context to someone to do a job.

00;19;08;04 - 00;19;31;10
Unknown
You give them and they do the work, and then you verify the work. Right. And people are learning that cycle along with, you know, what really are the capabilities of the technology? What can it do? You know, the the technology. One of my friends, who's, have a lot of respect for Matt Cohen in Austin. He, he says, I makes hard things easy and easy things hard.

00;19;31;13 - 00;19;55;24
Unknown
Right? Like it's, Yeah, it's like little the sort of their dumb things that it can't do, like commonsense things. But then, you know, it's, someone else called it. I love this description. Fiona, who's a product manager at Piping Technology, she calls them like, genius math babies because they're like, they have genius level math capabilities, but they're really dumb also.

00;19;55;26 - 00;20;14;08
Unknown
Yeah, they're they just can't do the basic things. If we went to ChatGPT right now and asks, how do you spell strawberry? One of the ten times that would misspell it, you know, I'm still or how many hours are there in strawberry or. Yes, or something like that. And then and then if they, it gets it right and you're like, hey, I don't think that's right.

00;20;14;12 - 00;20;42;17
Unknown
But oh, you know what, Chuck? You're right. Yeah, yeah I know it's it's crazy. So so, Lloyd, how does this fit with your career being the operation Sky? Were you always technologically forward thinking, looking at it or was a prove that shit to me? No. On the operations side, I was always. I mean, we didn't have AI for the better part of my career, but what we did have was emerging technology and other areas.

00;20;42;20 - 00;21;07;25
Unknown
You know, I started in the oil fields of West Texas, and even then we were looking at different exploration tools and ways to shoot geology and things like that. And we were pioneering some of that work out in the Permian Basin. I was always interested in that. Then when we went and moved downstream into refining, you know, we started I started working with EPCs on big projects.

00;21;07;27 - 00;21;29;07
Unknown
And, Amoco was one of the companies that was really pushing the 3D modeling, which is where you were, right? Yeah. Amoco. Yeah, I was with Amoco. Fluor is still building, you know, models in the basement, physical models. And, I remember that as a kid, you were. You were spending time up at piping. I was spending time up at Fluor with my dad on Saturdays, you know, looking at these models.

00;21;29;09 - 00;21;56;17
Unknown
And when I, you know, became aware of some of this 3D modeling capability, we, our contractor selections were based around who had the best technology for for doing that kind of work. So there's been different technologies on each of the doorsteps of my career. And I've always been interested in utilizing that. I want to prompt you to tell a story I just remembered, that has always stuck with me, about how in the oil field there was some.

00;21;56;17 - 00;22;22;03
Unknown
I can't remember the details, but there was some innovation that somebody was bringing in to the oil field. That was me. Okay. And then somebody was coming in and sabotage. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's. This is a great point about technology adoption and how uncomfortable it makes people. Yeah. Yeah. In fact, that's the point is, I think there's a common pattern here which applies in any kind of like change scenario, which, you know, where we, you know, we're overcoming as we are.

00;22;22;03 - 00;22;42;29
Unknown
Again, we fall in love with it, but we forget that we have to bring everybody else along. So, yeah, I was a production engineer at a big oil field out there, and we used to have pumpers and roustabouts going to the wells and checking the pump off, controllers. And, you know, they just used to listen to the sucker rods beating the hell out of the down hole pumps and and busting sucker rods.

00;22;42;29 - 00;23;08;17
Unknown
And it was really expensive. And so, I was interested in computers as well. And I said, why don't we just put a load cell on the polish rod and hook it up to a basic controller, and, and when the tension is no longer there, you know, the wellbore stri just shut it off. And so, I sold this idea, and we did a pilot study, and we started putting load cells, and controllers at each of the well sites.

00;23;08;19 - 00;23;28;18
Unknown
And about a month into it on my data system, I was losing all the data. And I went out there to try to figure out what was going on. And all the load cell cables were cut. So I went back to my boss and I said, you know, somebody's sabotaging this stuff. And he was a guy that had an eighth grade education and was running that oil field for 35 years.

00;23;28;18 - 00;23;47;12
Unknown
And he said, who do you think it is? I said, I have no idea. And he goes, it's the guy who thinks that you're taking his job. Yeah, he's got a pickup truck. And he goes, and he drives. So as well as every day. And he knows that if you can sit in an office and know whether that pump track is running and what the status of the down oil pump is, we're not going to need him anymore.

00;23;47;17 - 00;24;04;22
Unknown
And we we had to retrench that a whole project and think about how we were going to use that technology. Yeah. One of the oh go ahead. I was going to say and you actually you actually spoke to that person directly. I did you went and talked to him and, and I did, and he had words. Yeah, absolutely.

00;24;04;22 - 00;24;26;05
Unknown
Clear view, a clear view of it. And, you know, we had this conversation yesterday at an all hands meeting at Piping Technology. We introduced and unveiled, a cobot, which is a collaborative robot. And for welding. For welding. Yeah. Which is that which is the role we, out of 750 people, we have the most people that carry the title of welder across the day shift in the night shift.

00;24;26;05 - 00;24;48;12
Unknown
And it's the most expensive craft. And, yeah. So we we had an all hands meeting, 450 people on the production floor, and we unveiled this robot. And the first question was, is I going to take my job? Yeah. And, you know, the answer is it'll create jobs. But the only person that's going to take your job is the one that does not adapt this technology and figure out how to use it.

00;24;48;14 - 00;25;08;12
Unknown
Yeah, that's been my line of I is not going to take your job. It's somebody that does your job with AI. Absolutely. Yeah. Yep. The, you know, I wrote a blog, a little while ago. I called it the engineer from the third row who, you know, when they hear about AI, is immediately just terrified that it's going to take the job.

00;25;08;14 - 00;25;36;02
Unknown
What's interesting is that engineer actually has a golden source of truth in their head. They literally know things about the company that the company doesn't have in a spreadsheet, doesn't have an a PDF anywhere. Absolutely. And actually being the source of causation when AI's identifying correlation for you is incredibly value bull and people that are valuable get paid more.

00;25;36;05 - 00;25;58;25
Unknown
I mean, that's just the history of capitalism. So and I may be a little Pollyanna on this, but I truly believe that, you know, if you'll embrace this stuff and figure out how to ten x yourself, you're going to get paid more, you know. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, there's there's this question going around about, you know, jobs like, what's going to happen to jobs?

00;25;58;26 - 00;26;16;15
Unknown
Are we going to like, you know, we're all going to be out on the street or, you know, universal basic income, blah, blah, blah. And, I'm an optimist like you that ultimately there will be new jobs and that, and a lot of them. And, but I also think that there's going to be a lot of pain in the middle.

00;26;16;17 - 00;26;36;11
Unknown
And, I, I like to tell this story. A lot of people don't know this. Do you know how the, the most the the newest pope, chose his name? Why he chose Pope Leo? No. Well, he, it surprises me that more people don't know this, but Pope Leo chose. And I've been going to an Episcopal church.

00;26;36;11 - 00;26;58;10
Unknown
Even though I tell the rector I'm not sure y'all are a real religion. I think I consider myself a methodist, but, you know, the greatest flex by the Episcopal Church is they actually claim lineage all the way back to to Saint Peter being the first pope. Yeah, we're the rightful heir. I'm like, you're dude, this started it was beheading people.

00;26;58;12 - 00;27;18;29
Unknown
Let's be honest here. So I'm not as well versed on the Catholic Church. Well, I'm Hindu here. Yeah. So let me educate you. Verify this story. When I was done. Yeah. So, he he gave a speech. I think it was like, three days after he chose his papal name. Right. This is the Chicago pope. The American pope.

00;27;18;29 - 00;27;43;03
Unknown
Right? And, a previous pope, Leo presided over the Industrial Revolution. And, and, you know, as a part of that, he helped, usher people through a period of, a challenge to their dignity because, you know, they got their worth from doing certain things. And the Industrial Revolution changed all of that, completely changed all of that.

00;27;43;03 - 00;28;06;13
Unknown
And he said, I we're in a similar moment right now. He he named artificial intelligence as, as a part of that where there's a coming change to human dignity and part of part of the reason why I I'm it's really important to me that we, figure out how to, like, retrain our workforce with this new technology is because I want our people to be ahead of this.

00;28;06;17 - 00;28;26;11
Unknown
Right. I want for when this comes and happens to society, you know, I want our people to know how to use this technology and not be scrambling to figure it out. I don't want us to be scrambling to figure it out as an organization. And yes, of course, like it also makes us competitive and keeps us ahead of the ahead of the curve.

00;28;26;12 - 00;28;49;04
Unknown
Yeah, I want wanted on the surface that looks like, you know, a business driven decision, but but what folks don't know if they don't work inside our company is that, there's a cultural revolution going on, and an our interest is in, supporting people in their in, in both their personal and professional lives at a level which goes beyond corporate responsibility.

00;28;49;07 - 00;29;12;24
Unknown
And, you know, the, the, the use of these tools are actually to try to equip them to be successful on many levels. Yeah, they'll contribute back to the company with the skills that they're learning here. But we really want people to leave this organization with skills, knowledge and self-fulfillment that goes well beyond what they will get in any of the company that they would work for.

00;29;12;24 - 00;29;27;26
Unknown
Just being paid to do a job and trying to keep up. So there's a very personal aspect to why you and I came back to this company. And, you know, we serve on charitable boards and we do a lot of philanthropy, but so a lot of people would say, why don't you just do more of that if you want to help society?

00;29;27;26 - 00;29;52;16
Unknown
And the answer is because people spend half their waking hours away from their family and they go to a job and you have access to people on a level that allows you to do transformative work, and giving them these tools and building the confidence that they can use these tools to better their lives, improve their income, and do these kinds of things is frankly, a more noble, objective than just driving bottom line profits.

00;29;52;18 - 00;30;13;03
Unknown
Yeah. It's it's, you know, I've been rewatching Ted Lasso because the Four Seasons and Ted's line is, I want these boys to be the best version of themselves on the field and off, and, So how do you answer the question, when somebody asks, are these robots taking my job? No, I said, they're going to create jobs here.

00;30;13;05 - 00;30;29;07
Unknown
They're going to create jobs. And for you personally, who is a welder? You're going to run that machine. And as an a machine operator, you're going to make ten bucks more an hour than when you're sweating in the shop, welding. Because we need your skills. That robot and you just said it, you know, this, this robot is going to do the best.

00;30;29;07 - 00;30;46;14
Unknown
Well, that it knows how to do. But there needs to be a human that could interpret the quality of that weld and whether or not it was done properly. So you're still going to use your welding skills, you're not going to be sweating your ass off in the shop, and you're going to be paid for the technology that's needed to run this machine, you know?

00;30;46;17 - 00;31;13;01
Unknown
So it, it it increases earning potential. And it's, it's a it's an upward mobility pathway. Yeah. One of the things I heard from, a vendor of ours who uses robotic welding already, we're early. And adopting this right now, is that they look for people who can play video games really well, like, so you've got some welding skills, and you also know how to play video games, because part of what you're doing is you're interfacing with this computer and and navigating a computer interface.

00;31;13;04 - 00;31;38;03
Unknown
That I heard this idea that I really like of, you have white collar jobs, blue collar jobs, and maybe there's this new category of job emerging, that I've heard called a new collar job. And it's a it's a blend of the two where you've got some, mechanical intelligence, right? Like, you know, the kind of intelligence you'll find for somebody who's, like, worked in the field.

00;31;38;03 - 00;32;00;16
Unknown
Yeah. Vocational skills, hands on, hands on skills. Right. Which doesn't require an engineering degree. But, you know, it's like that, the thing that, we all know it when we see it, right? You may or may not have it, and it combines that and the knowledge, working skill, the skill to navigate these systems and these, you know, that, that software component.

00;32;00;19 - 00;32;26;08
Unknown
So I like that idea, the idea of a new collar job versus blue or white. So get a coat. So, you know, my my kind of soapbox because I'm esoteric around here that runs around. And you know, the we granola notes every meeting. We're like obsessive about all the tribal knowledge that's in our head. Let's get it in the to the agent so we can, you know, use it.

00;32;26;10 - 00;33;05;22
Unknown
Granola is said about me when we were told granola to go ahead and roast us. Chuck sales functionality. We don't have that. So, hey, as as the future is here, you know, I truly think these tools, I talk a lot about what is the art of the possible. And so it's user adoption now, but it's really we were talking about it earlier, rewiring the mind to Holy cow, now that I can do this, something that runs 24 seven, now that I can do unlimited computation and search, I can find correlations that I didn't even appreciate existed and stuff.

00;33;05;25 - 00;33;28;26
Unknown
I think that's really going to be where it's game changing. Do you all have like a plan? Get nitty gritty with me on what y'all are thinking about there. Because we'd love to learn this. And yeah, you know, I mean, we're Captain Kirk, right? We're going where no man's gone before. Yeah. You know, this, this rollout that we've done of agents at the company, I think it's in its early stages, like I.

00;33;28;28 - 00;33;55;11
Unknown
So, we don't have a grand plan, but, there are some really hot ideas that are emerging. So. So tell me on these agents, individuals in the company can build their own agents. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, this product task list, basically, like cloud co-work and and open claw or Hermes. Right. These are some, common harness, products that are out there.

00;33;55;13 - 00;34;19;09
Unknown
You can connect it up to all of your services. Granola, Google Drive, Google Docs, your email, etcetera. Right. And you can connect it up to multiple instances of these services. Right? You get it? I've got three Gmail accounts. It connects up to all of them, Google Chat, etc.. It's funny, on our, on our cloud, deep brain, as we call our agent.

00;34;19;09 - 00;34;45;15
Unknown
Yeah. They can hook up to all my emails except one. Yeah. No. Okay, keep that one out there. It's better if we just don't touch them. Yes, sure. I mean, like that in that way, all the apple stuff is basically out of bounds for for these technologies. At least so far. Apple notes. You know, as you know, messages generally you're not people are not put into these products.

00;34;45;17 - 00;35;12;28
Unknown
So, and then people can go in and just tell it what they want it to do. So you there's you build your agent and it builds the, you know, you talk about the technology, it builds the markdown file, but it has you say, hey, like I have a morning, briefing that gets delivered into my inbox, which is like a triage across all of my emails, my previous granola notes, my Google Drive emails that I've sent as to like what I have going on that particular day.

00;35;13;04 - 00;35;32;10
Unknown
It also will process certain inbound emails and do a data analysis or, you know, read it for me and summarize it for me. So like, I'll get something and then, you know, there's like all this initial work to get to the point where I'm actually taking in the information that they wanted to deliver to me. It'll do the pre-processing on that.

00;35;32;10 - 00;35;54;26
Unknown
And so people all have this capability now, and a couple of places where we've seen some really great building happen. So one, for example, is, triage of incoming emails that we get for, requests for quotations. We have info at piping techs. People send in emails, and, we have built an agent that will process all of those.

00;35;54;26 - 00;36;18;22
Unknown
So it reads the email, it extracts key information about, you know, who's requesting the quote, the person, their email address, phone number, mobile, the company they work at. It gives us some intelligence. If it's a company we don't know, that's really helpful to know that you know who who is this that's requesting this purchase, you know, as a way to inform whether it's more likely or less likely that they would buy from us.

00;36;18;22 - 00;36;39;27
Unknown
So we can kind of prioritize, prioritize the that inbound what products do they want? We make pipe supports. And within that insulated pipe sports slide plates. There's all these different product families. What product family is it. So we can route it to the right specialist. And this is all work by the way, that happens across four different people today.

00;36;40;00 - 00;37;03;14
Unknown
So it's essentially, you know, giving a a letting, giving capacity back to those people so that they can do more productive things. Also, that process, because it's human driven today by these four people, and we're not eliminating all of their work, but we're dramatically taking it down. The it, you know, it's these four people.

00;37;03;14 - 00;37;36;27
Unknown
It takes a it takes time, right. And, in, in our business, the often the company that quotes it the fastest, they have an advantage. So at the max it can take we we've mapped out the whole work process for hours to, to process not not to send a, the quote to the customer who asked for it, just to get it to the engineer who's going to, like, analyze the requirements and then then provide the quote could take four hours and we have shrunk that now to something like 15 to 30 minutes.

00;37;37;03 - 00;38;04;24
Unknown
Right. So our business cycle is faster and we increase the likelihood that we're going to win the business because we're faster. So, and I really see this just as one example, as just like the starting point for the commercial engine, meaning. Well, this is the pattern, I think, in, you know, as you build these AI agents and, and do work with AI as you start out and you have it do this thing and the thing you have it do, you are then taking a subsequent action, right?

00;38;04;24 - 00;38;27;08
Unknown
Like you're getting some information and then you ask yourself, hey, could I have it do that next thing. And you keep sort of like you know, well, and what's going to be really cool because right now what you're talking about is saving time, making people more efficient. What's going to be really cool is you're going to learn all those customers, and you're going to start sending bids before they request them.

00;38;27;10 - 00;38;48;23
Unknown
Hey, we know you're running short on this. We we've got you. Tell me now we can get it to you. That's where that's going. We've started that. Yeah. We're looking at the installed database and having it tell us where something's going to wear out and go into them ahead of that and saying, let us do an inspection and chances are we're going to wind up on a more product.

00;38;48;25 - 00;39;19;11
Unknown
Yeah. As an example, one of the things that we're doing already with this, with this thing that processes, RFCs, inbound inquiries is we have it identifying, using AI, which one of the requests are coming from someone working on a turnaround or a shutdown. And we have a field service division, and it basically tees up that opportunity to the field service division saying, hey, we have a customer or somebody's inquiring about product, but, you know, they're doing it at for a shut down or turnaround.

00;39;19;13 - 00;39;39;20
Unknown
Do you know, reach out to them and it will craft a highly customized email based on what they said as to what we what service we can provide to them in our field service division. And it's working really well. Like we get a high response rate on those and that'll keep growing, right? Like where this thing will start to do more and more jobs so that, you know, but it's always human in the loop.

00;39;39;20 - 00;40;00;00
Unknown
There's somebody that's curating those actions that are being taken. And I'll tell you one other thing that I think is that's been really cool about this is, you know, people are not like, oh, no, this is bad. My job is going to go away. It's actually, they're excited because it's taking away the drudgery of their job.

00;40;00;00 - 00;40;20;09
Unknown
Nobody likes to do these, like, mundane and rote tasks. Yet, you know, the the days of knowledge workers are filled with them. Excel spreadsheets. And for pushing and pulling data, all of that goes away like in this future world. So I'm going to cut you off so quick to ask you a question, put you on the spot. Back in the day.

00;40;20;09 - 00;40;42;17
Unknown
Production engineer how much of your time was just looking for something? We looked at logs all day long, but but finding that log. So actually, you know, finding. Is it over here in Bellevue is it was it in an email. Where did I see it. Oh I mean yeah. Yeah I get what you're. Yeah, yeah. So, well I want your answer on what percent because I'll tell you what I quote.

00;40;42;17 - 00;41;08;21
Unknown
When, when I'm out and about, 85%, 90% of the time you were preparing to do the intellectual 10% of the work. Yeah, I say, I say at least half your times looking for stuff. Yeah. And then 30 ish percent is stuff that's not value added. It's saying out or filling out a regulatory form. 10 or 15% first cut of copying and pasting on a work over procedure.

00;41;08;22 - 00;41;29;26
Unknown
You know, it's kind of like, yeah, not not value added ultimately has to be done. But yeah. Yeah. Oh, interesting. Sorry to put you on the spot. No no no I want to I want to augment something. Please go. Yeah. Our our folks are excited about it. But that's where they land it. Okay. In the end, there is healthy skepticism in the company around the use of this technology.

00;41;29;26 - 00;41;58;25
Unknown
And we gauge whether or not it's actually, valuable based on sure results matter, but it's also the reaction of employees when they when they're asked to try something, regardless of their mindset going into it. And they come out of it and say, this is good stuff, then we know that we found something that's valuable. It's interesting you say that because the you know, if you look at the typical C-suite, you had the oh my God, you can't use AI.

00;41;58;25 - 00;42;22;08
Unknown
We're banning it. Yeah. And then it was like, no, this is okay, I'm going to give you ChatGPT. And now we've gotten to the point of, oh my gosh, I looked at my tokens. Bill, we got to cut this back. But what I find interesting is and I tell companies this, hey, if you have three people build a frack interference app, that's signal that means that's really important.

00;42;22;08 - 00;42;54;27
Unknown
Why don't you go throw some talent at it and get the best app? Absolutely. So I looking at it as signal, I think school I'm going to put this one to you. One of the things I've seen and I wrote a blog on this, although I'm sounding like a broken record, I think the CIO has one of the hardest jobs on the planet here, because if you think about it, we incentivize those guys for years of the machines need to be on and our data needs to be secure.

00;42;55;00 - 00;43;20;00
Unknown
I mean, we fired people because windows 95 crashed, right? You know, and yeah, how do you get the CIO to embrace agents and things like that? Because, you know, that's getting out over their skis, which unfortunately, I think you have to do to make money in this business. You you just have to be out over your skis. I don't view that as reckless at all.

00;43;20;01 - 00;43;45;15
Unknown
But yeah, well, our advantage is that our CEO is our CIO, so there's no sale. And I say that and certainly he drives the technology in the business. And, I'm that's very powerful. So, yeah, we're not negotiating within the company around this. And we don't have to and, you know, coming back to something you said, I had this conversation with my sister who's, you know, she's a commercial litigator.

00;43;45;15 - 00;44;01;16
Unknown
And I said, are you guys using AI now? Absolutely. There's a firewall. We absolutely will not be using any of that. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me. I've seen the research that goes into doing, you know, looking at, you know, precedent cases and case law and everything else. I mean, that's how you synthesize your arguments.

00;44;01;16 - 00;44;22;05
Unknown
You look at, you know, what's been won and lost in the courts, and then you take a position on that. I mean, it's research you have you pay analysts and and associates to do that kind of stuff. And she says, yeah, we're just not going to get there. And and I said, look, the attorney that's in private practice is going to kick your ass because they don't have a staff of people doing research in the library.

00;44;22;08 - 00;44;46;03
Unknown
And sure enough, everybody gets training now on AI within that for I've got a buddy that's a trial lawyer and he literally downloads every transcript, every training for every trial of a judge. He's going in front of looking for any sort of edge. Yep. You know, and, yeah, it's crazy. I'll show you the afterwards, the briefing book that, my agent created for this podcast.

00;44;46;03 - 00;45;02;18
Unknown
It read, it took it took the transcripts of my podcasts, and it kind of like, summarized, like, hey, make us prepared, like, let us know what we're going to be expecting. And, and we watch some of your podcasts and I listen, I've listened to some in the past as well. But, you know, it's good at pattern recognition. Yeah.

00;45;02;20 - 00;45;27;15
Unknown
Well, did you again broken record blog. But, last week's blog, I wrote about attaching all my podcast transcripts and letting Claud go to town and psychoanalyze me. Yeah, it was crazy. Yeah, we follow that. Yeah. Gosh, I should have better things to do, but, Yeah. No. That's cool. So how are you? What was the. The conclusion was, the testimony.

00;45;27;19 - 00;45;44;27
Unknown
Yeah. You basically having to pay the toll. You have to pay the toll. And it it came back to, my senior thesis that I wrote for doc C back at, What does that what does that mean? Explain that. I'm gonna I'm going to ask you to ask you a question. Yeah. So doc C was Gilbert Cuthbertson.

00;45;44;29 - 00;46;05;07
Unknown
I know, I know, doc C like, you know, and political science professor and his, his, theory was myth, power, value, use myth to convert values to power. So the, the story he would tell is George Washington. And the story about chopping down the cherry tree. Father, I cannot tell a lie. I did it tell made up story by political consultant.

00;46;05;07 - 00;46;32;02
Unknown
Right. But, so, anyway, for my senior thesis for doc, I wrote on the Kennedy assassination, and the theory I took was if you died mysteriously, you know, and there were all these gunshot wounds and one car accidents. And then we're going to take your version of the assassination is true. And if you're still alive talking about the assassination, we're going to assume you were lying.

00;46;32;02 - 00;46;52;27
Unknown
So, Arlen Specter, the single bullet. He's a senator running around, okay? He's lying. But the prostitute that claims she was in a car with two Cubans and a guy named Leon Oswald, who dies mysteriously in the one car crash. We're going to say she's the truth. And actually, Claude came out and said, well, Chuck, that's your operating system.

00;46;52;27 - 00;47;11;12
Unknown
You feel like to be worthy of being heard. You have to pay a toll. And it actually went through and analyzed. It's like, it's why you apologize for a joke. It's why you're self-deprecating here and all. Don't know if that's true or if I let myself be talked into it. But the more and more I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about it.

00;47;11;12 - 00;47;38;28
Unknown
Yeah. Holy cow. It's about selfish self-acceptance. Yeah, yeah. And, it's, it's interesting because I told my mom about this, and mom goes, wow, I had no idea. And I'm like, this is either, this is, this is either, the future software or my therapy session next week. And it's probably both. Probably both. Yeah. So how are you how are you navigating the issue.

00;47;38;28 - 00;48;07;08
Unknown
And maybe it's your your software platform allows for this of somebody builds a cool agent here. How do you get it across the organization. Yeah I mean I think we're still we're figuring all of that out. Like, how do we scale this up? I, and also connect all the dots, because, I have something happening that I love, which is this, bottoms up activity where people are creating stuff so they're not.

00;48;07;11 - 00;48;32;27
Unknown
You know, one thing I've never wanted to do is, like, force things on people, right? Right. I mean, there are instances where you. If people are resistant and, and, and but like, we like to, give people the space to figure things out. And so this emergent property of the, of what we're doing, I love now how do we, you know, scale that up.

00;48;32;27 - 00;49;04;18
Unknown
How do we, spread it across the organization? That's a bit of the next step in the process. And I think it's really just getting people together to trade notes. It's just good old fashioned organizational design. And, and, having the right, organizational structures in place to make all of that happen. That's that's really the key. And what do you how how do you think about guardrails in terms of because, I mean, employees and not maliciously, but just left to their own devices?

00;49;04;18 - 00;49;30;13
Unknown
Oops. I deleted a database. I didn't you know, I didn't create a read only connect and stuff. How do you think about that? I mean, I don't see I haven't seen really any problems with that at this point where, you know, there have been, negative, results. I mean, there have been some, like, funny situations where, it really points at software needing to be built differently in the age of agents.

00;49;30;13 - 00;49;52;08
Unknown
Like today, software is built for like, Chuck Yates and Roy Cash, you know, banging on a keyboard. But, we had a, we have an in-house, internal software that is used by everyone in the company that I actually built when I got out of college. And, and we run a lot of, like, a lot of the business, manufacturing and sales off of this, off this tool.

00;49;52;10 - 00;50;18;24
Unknown
And, and one of the salespeople had his agent go and, like, retrieve some information from there, but it launched 70 queries at the same time on this web interface, which has never really seen that kind of simultaneous traffic. Like, everyone flush the toilet at the same time, right? And the pipes burst like the, the site, the our internal software crashed and, you know, it was back up within a couple of minutes, and I.

00;50;19;01 - 00;50;50;04
Unknown
Hey. What happened? Well, it looks like, so-and-so's agent, went in and launched 70 browser sessions at the same time. So, you know, that's that's, that's something that's true is like a lot of our technology infrastructure is going to be is going to need to be designed for agents versus humans because, giving, giving a human access to your Gmail search totally different from giving an agent access to it from from all kinds of standpoints, like uptime being one of them, but also security.

00;50;50;04 - 00;51;15;22
Unknown
Right? All this like crazy security stuff. It's also the vulnerability of your data sitting in, in an email, like a password. It's way greater in this moment, I moment because that's like earlier it was security by obscurity, but now that doesn't exist anymore. Yeah. We've been you know, I went down this weekend the rabbit hole on just permissions, you know.

00;51;15;22 - 00;51;48;06
Unknown
So I mean, why we don't want the field guys to be able to access payroll. Right. But if the field guys get to see what Louis is, and they can reorder workflows to make it cheaper, that's a good thing. And so how do we navigate those type of things? And when you start thinking through the ability to query any bit of data you want, and then you go, if they can't see it, do I tell them, hey, that exists, but you can't see it?

00;51;48;12 - 00;52;04;29
Unknown
Do I give them an answer that kind of ignores that they can't see it? There going to be a lot of those type issues that are going to be software driven, that he's going to do, but culture driven that you're going to have to think through in terms of how do we actually navigate that? Yeah, that that's absolutely right.

00;52;05;01 - 00;52;25;26
Unknown
I mean, something that we can all relate to is our Montessori backgrounds. And that's an ethos in this company is try things, make mistakes. We actually don't really have guardrails per se. I think we'll probably learn what guardrails need to be put in by some consequences. But you know, we're not afraid of of you know what? What's going to happen.

00;52;25;27 - 00;52;47;05
Unknown
We we think there's more to be learned through action than inaction or limiting people's use of this tool right now. I mean, yeah, you probably hit on the one area that we we guard carefully. We just implemented, human capital system, and that's not plugged in to a lot of this. It's it's off limits. But, or isn't it.

00;52;47;08 - 00;53;11;01
Unknown
Okay. Yeah. Well, I'm I when I ask my agent. What? Yeah. Yeah, I looked it up last week, Lloyd. Okay. All right, well, I'm the only one who has access. Okay? You know, I know there. Yeah, there's your answer as I experiment with it. I mean, back, back. In the private equity days, I threatened to just put on my door a poster of what everybody made and what everybody share the fund was.

00;53;11;01 - 00;53;37;28
Unknown
And if anyone was to argue, walk right in, please. Do you know? So that'd be cool. All right. So, two kind of questions close out on, one, when we do this again in five years, tell me something we're talking about in five years that we didn't talk about right now. Is there something coming? I'm kind of force in the crystal ball.

00;53;37;28 - 00;53;42;27
Unknown
Question on you.

00;53;43;00 - 00;54;10;29
Unknown
For our company, your company, the world. Wherever you want to take that. I mean, I think there's a lot of intelligence on the software side of things, but as an engineer, I'm. I'm really interested in the in the mechanical side of all of this, particularly the robotics side. So, I think our view of, of how machines are going to work in the shop today is not anywhere close to what it's going to be five years from now.

00;54;11;03 - 00;54;43;23
Unknown
I honestly think that, humans, human labor on the production floor is going to be largely replaced with armies of robots. And those those jobs are going to wind up transitioning into a different class, of, of labor entirely. And I think we're starting to just see a little bit of this. I don't know how much of what we look at on the internet is real versus already AI fabricated, but but even the imagination of that is something that I think is going to be accelerated.

00;54;43;23 - 00;55;08;23
Unknown
Well beyond I mean, we got excited about a robotic arm in which we can, you know, give a well, profile and then hit three points and you don't need programing anymore. And that's a whiz bang thing right now. But I think that, the technology is going to accelerate on the application side. At a rate that actually is, is going to be more profound in terms for a manufacturing business than what's going on in the front office.

00;55;08;27 - 00;55;41;19
Unknown
I think we're doing a lot of stuff already in the front office around intelligence, reading emails, customer profiles, preparing even requisitions. I mean, we have software that was a purpose vertical, software that was go through all the procurement emails and generates requisitions and sends out bids to suppliers without any anybody touching it. Yeah. And so we're we're advanced there I think on the operation side machine, I'm really interested in what machines are going to do and, and I think there's a 10 or 20% scary path there as well.

00;55;41;21 - 00;56;03;03
Unknown
You know, it's interesting. We've got one client that is planning for a, robot to basically go out to the well site instead of sending the pumper out there every day. Yeah, I saw a pitch for a company yesterday. Did you there? Yeah, for out of Greentown Labs. Right. It's a like a dog robot that does, pipe bracket inspection.

00;56;03;09 - 00;56;21;01
Unknown
Yeah, yeah. And, anyway, I said, well, what are the pumpers think about that? And he goes, no, you don't understand. The pumper is going to be able to sit there and they're going to be directing all this, and they're going to get called out to the, oh shit, this is bad. I got to go fix this. I've got to get the human out there.

00;56;21;04 - 00;56;42;15
Unknown
And, the other thing they went on about is, is they think you're going to be 3D printing parts potentially out at the well site. You know, the truck could pull up, boom, 3D print the part and change it out. So they're already starting to think about that in terms of what kind of skater do we need? What kind of infrastructure do we need out at the well site?

00;56;42;18 - 00;57;15;14
Unknown
Yeah. So that's cool. I think, I think all of this technology is, is just going to look radically different, like where the, the what we consider to be state of the art today, is, I think, going to kind of look like, you know, Fisher-Price toys, in the, in the future. I think that, software in particular is, is going to get, get to be a lot more shape shifting and, flexible, where today it's extremely rigid.

00;57;15;17 - 00;57;56;08
Unknown
I think, you know, whether it's a CRM or, something else, these systems are just you buy it and it's it's only works in one way. But I think future CRM, for example, just picking that as a category, it is going to be headless. It's something that won't have a front end. And your front end will be something that you talk to, maybe something that even is embodied, meaning, you know, robot that can, you know, navigate the world and not just exist behind a screen and so I kind of think that's what diffusion will look like is that, these things will be a lot more seamless.

00;57;56;08 - 00;58;21;20
Unknown
The technology will be a lot more seamless. And I've already experienced this a little bit where you, you can actually have I have my agent one shot things and, it really is shrinking the distance between my intention and an action being taken. Good story. I thought it was really cool. It's sort of an moment for me where, you know, I have, my I turned my garage into a home gym.

00;58;21;20 - 00;58;44;23
Unknown
My wife turned it into a home gym, which is awesome. And I have to give her the credit. She got it carpeted, and we put an AC in there, and, I've got some Lutron switches that control the lights. And so, I walk into my garage, there are two switches and I push the on button, I push the on button, and I'm like always obsessed with how to make things more seamless, efficient, better, better system.

00;58;44;23 - 00;59;02;06
Unknown
Right. How do I build a better system? And so I was curious one day as I walked into the garage to lifts weights that, hey, I wonder, I wonder if, like, I could find a motion sensor that when I walk in the garage, it automatically turns on the lights. There zero zero situations where I want to be in the in the garage with it dark.

00;59;02;09 - 00;59;21;00
Unknown
Yeah. Yeah. And so I took a photo of the Lutron switches, texted it to my agent, and I said, can you recommend, a motion sensor that'll work with this? It gave me two options. I was like a $70 option and a $200 option, both from Lutron. And I have it tied into my Amazon account.

00;59;21;00 - 00;59;42;05
Unknown
I said, great, buy. The first one shows up at my door the next day. It didn't set it up for me, but but it will. But the point is, I probably would have. I probably would never have gone and sat at my computer and done the search. I've got so many other things going on, it shrunk that, the window for between my intention and the action being taken.

00;59;42;11 - 01;00;05;09
Unknown
And there's so many other instances where I'm seeing this happen where it'll like dynamically spin up a software interface for something that I want to do. So I think this the future computing today and how we like order food and how we, you know, move information around and how we communicate and we do it through this little like square that sits in our pockets that has a screen on it.

01;00;05;11 - 01;00;27;06
Unknown
The future is going to look, completely different in terms of the way these systems work. And at the same time, I like want to say I think we're still going to be like the, you know, screwed up humans that we are today and have all of the human issues of, like, how do we get along, right, how do we understand what the other person wants and what they're saying, right?

01;00;27;07 - 01;00;53;04
Unknown
How do we listen deeply to one another? How do we not make, you know, judgments, that are incorrect? Right? The human condition through millions of years of evolution, we're pretty set. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's not going to change. That's, That's cool. Well, this has been fascinating. Guys. I really appreciate y'all coming on the, the the funny thing, you know, you're you're Fisher Price analogy.

01;00;53;04 - 01;01;14;09
Unknown
I had dinner with, Sarah and Kelly, and we're at Skeeters and the, founder of ESPN had passed away, so they were showing old ESPN, and Sarah and Kelly were just going, dad, look at those graphics, really? And I was like, oh, that was high tech back in the day, you know? Yeah. So it's, it's funny.

01;01;14;09 - 01;01;18;24
Unknown
Well, you two were, cool to come on. Thank you for that, you guys. This was a blast.